


Unexpected

by celinamarniss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Fix-It, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Gen, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-04-28 23:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14460105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celinamarniss/pseuds/celinamarniss
Summary: There was a baby asleep on the couch when Luke came home.





	Unexpected

There was a baby asleep on the couch when Luke came home.

He was sprawled out flat, face pressed into the cushion, a tiny fist pushed up against his mouth. Luke guessed that he was about a year old—maybe a year and half—a toddler, really. A blanket had slipped off of the couch and pooled onto the floor, and Luke picked it up and tucked it back around the sleeping child. The boy sighed, his small body rising and falling with the intake of breath.

Luke had felt Mara’s presence the moment she’d broken the atmosphere, but at the time he’d been in the middle of a budget meeting and couldn’t slip away to meet her when her ship had landed. It had been another hour before he could get away, and he’d all but rushed back to their quarters to see her. She’d been gone for three weeks, chasing down intel for Karrde on the Outer Rim, and she’d been out of touch for the last week. Karrde had assured Luke that everything was fine and their bond hadn’t broadcasted otherwise, but the days he didn’t hear from her felt long and torturous.

He’d expected to find her alone in their quarters, tired from her trip but happy to see him, and had been looking forward to stealing a few hours alone with her before the outside world intruded again.

He hadn’t expected to find a toddler on the couch.

“Mara?” he called. He sensed her slip into the room from the direction of their bedroom, and he kept his lone low, so as not to rouse the sleeping child. “Why is there a baby on the couch?”

“We found a slaver’s ring operating out of Talroon.” She did look tired, though he suspected it was the weariness of caring for a child over the course of—how many days? Talroon had been the last place she’d transmitted from, over a week ago. “They were kidnapping children and selling them to the Imperial remnant, like Leia suspected.”

There had been rumors of Imperial centers built to train child soldiers, culled from worlds on the edge of Imperial space, the Imperial war machine no longer able to recruit as it once had.

“They already had a shipment of children when we caught up with them. They were all so young…” He stepped close, slipping an arm around her. Her gaze was distant and she shook her head as she said, “I wasn’t going to let anyone turn them into soldiers.”

She left the fate of the slavers unsaid, though he could image her wrath. He tightened his grip around her.

“Afterwards, we returned the children to their families, if they still had families. The slavers killed his family, and… he didn’t have anyone.” She chewed her lip. She turned toward him, but didn’t look him quite in the eye. “For the first time... I wanted to be that for someone.”

He caught a flash of the memory that was playing out behind her eyes—the filthy hold of a ship, the smell of abuse heavy in the air—the boy wrapped in a dirty rag, his large eyes wide with fear, his tiny hands clinging to her as she lifted him up—

“Mah!” The boy had awakened, heaving his upper body upwards on his hands, his face twisted in distress. “Mah! Mah!”

Mara broke away from Luke to scoop the toddler up into her arms. “Mara’s here,” she murmured. “It’s okay, Finn.” The child buried his head into her neck, his hand fisting in her shirt, and she stroked his back, shifting slightly from foot to foot.

He was trying, really trying, to look at the situation reasonably, and not let his emotions lead him to make a snap decision that they’d both have to live with. Adopting a child was a momentous decision, one that should be met with discussion and planning and with careful consideration of the massive responsibility that came with raising a child. You didn’t just come home one day and find a baby your wife had brought home from the Outer Rim sleeping on your couch and decide to keep him.

But watching her fuss over the bright-eyed toddler, he knew it was already a lost cause.

“I thought you didn’t want children,” he said, trying not to make the statement sound like an accusation.

“I still don’t want to have a baby,” she said. “But I don’t… I don’t want to give up Finn.”

Luke had always imagined himself with a family, but Mara remained wary of the concept of having children and had never hesitated to make her position clear. Luke prefered to think of it as a series of negotiations that hadn’t come to a satisfactory conclusion yet. They both had active, busy lives that didn’t give them much space for children at the moment (though that had never stopped Han and Leia, he reflected), and he had figured there was time for them both to decide. He hadn’t expected to find himself in the same shoes as his Aunt Beru and Breha Organa.

“Well, this wasn’t exactly how I imagined becoming a father,” Luke said.

She finally met his eyes, her face slowly lighting up with a smile that held all her hope in its delicate curve.  

“Hello, Finn.” Luke reached out and brushed his hand over Finn’s soft curls. Mara shifted Finn so that Luke could lift the child into his arms, uncurling the fingers still tangled in her shirt. Finn looked dubiously up at him during the transfer, and cast a worried look back at Mara.

“It’s okay, Finn,” she said gently. Luke had never heard her use that tone of voice before, and it _did_ things to his heart. “Say hello to Luke.”

“Mah,” Finn said stubbornly and twisted back toward her, throwing his weight forward. Luke had seen this maneuver before; Anakin had been especially prone to flinging himself out of his mother’s arms, and he adjusted quickly to catch Finn. Mara darted forward, reaching for Finn at the same time, and they ended up banging together, Finn cradled between them.

Finn laughed, delighted, and Luke found himself laughing too.

Mara eased Finn back onto her hip, where he caught hold of her braid and examined it between his fingers.

 _“Can_ we keep him? Isn’t there paperwork—?”

“Ghent’s already working on it,” Mara said.

“Oh, okay.”

“I would have stopped him if you wanted to send Finn back,” she said, caution returning to her tone.

“Well, it does make things easier.”

“Karrde ordered...things.” She waved toward a pile of boxes he hadn’t noticed. Baby things. He smiled as a thought crossed his mind.

“Who taught you to change diapers?”

“Chin.” She made a face.

He chuckled, and Finn craned his head around to look at him. Luke smiled. “Welcome home, Finn.”

Finn gazed at him thoughtfully, and then crammed Mara’s braid into his mouth.

 

//

 

Of all the places he’d been in the galaxy (or at least, the places he remembered), Finn would rank Jakku among the absolute worst. He couldn’t wait to get out of this Force-forsaken junkyard and back home as soon as humanly possible where he could wash the sand out of places that sand shouldn’t _be_.

But it was all worth it to have met the scavenger girl who knocked him off his feet (into all that horrible sand) and then took his hand (her warm fingers wrapping around his) and _ran_ (her face all bright and fierce and glorious).  

“Luke Skywalker?” Rey stared, her eyes wide. “I thought he was a myth!”

Finn laughed. “Nah, he’s my dad.”

 


End file.
